My friends and I just saw the movie La La Land. Literally, I just drove home from the theater and am putting my jumbled thoughts out into the world.
If you appreciate music, you will like this movie.
If you appreciate waltz and dancing and fun choreography (by none other than Mandy Moore - what?!), you will like this movie.
If you enjoy singing, you will like this movie.
If you enjoy the beginning part of a relationship, you will like this movie.
If you like happy endings, you may or may not like this movie.
If what I just said gives you pause, go see this movie anyway.
If you like piano, Emma Stone's big, beautiful eyes, and Ryan Gosling's je ne sais quoi, you will like this movie.
At the end of the movie, my friends and I watched the credits and listened to the beautiful music in silent awe. Our emotions had just been taken for a wild ride and we were taking a minute to process. It left me feeling a little raw and exposed. It resonated with me. It left us shocked.
La La Land did so well because I think it treats "La-la land" with a firm grip of reality. Having never been an aspiring actress or musician in Hollywood, I cannot say for sure, but I suspect it was accurate.
It showed the fears and pains and struggles of making it in Hollywood which, really, are the same as the struggles every one of us faces. And it treated them in an authentic way.
You followed the story of Mia and Sebastian as their lives intertwined, you fell in love with them, you sang with them, you danced with them. You routed for them and you invested in them. This was a couple that could make it work.
As someone once told me, "the beginning of any relationship is always fun." And we saw that, we were swept along with it. And then when they fought, we were a little shaken, but I think we thought Mia and Seb would make it through this.
But this movie also examines a difficult question: Is it possible to have both love and your dreams? The answer, a resounding no.
Mia puts on a one woman show which is underattended and Seb, Seb fails to make it on time. By the time he gets there, the show is over, Mia is leaving, stricken that no one came, that those who did had negative comments, and possibly most troubling to her that Seb wasn't there.
She leaves town, Seb is given the opportunity to win her back with a romantic gesture that involves an audition that might be Mia's big break. He takes her to the audition and afterward, Mia asks Seb, "where are we?" I think all relationships face this question at some point or another and the answer can make or break the relationship. Seb tells her that they will just have to wait and see; they tell each other that they will always love each other, and evidently, Mia does get the gig.
Ultimately, we find out that they both have achieved their respective dreams. And I think it was Mia almost walking out on her dream that shook Seb up and made him go grab his with both hands. Seeing someone you love give up or almost give up on their dream does that to you.
It is a moving movie because it treats life with honesty. We are swept away in the euphoria of a budding romance. We route for the characters, their relationship, and their dreams. But then it strips that away, it asks what we will do when things are not working out how we wanted them to. It shakes us awake and asks us what we will give up for our dream.
What will the cost of achieving our dream be? Will it be the love of our life? Or will being with the love of our live cause us to give up our dream?
Life doesn't have to be that stark, but it often is. And maybe, they weren't the love of each other's lives. It was obvious that Mia's dream was not to be married, but to be an actress and she got that. Seb wanted a club and he got that.
But I think the painful thing is that Seb may not have moved on even though Mia has. He names the club what Mia suggested and when he sees her there in the heartbreaking final scene of the movie, he plays their song.
He told her he would always love her and he meant it.
But maybe he loves her because she encouraged him to go after his dream. He saw her walking out on hers and forced her not to so then he had to do the same.
As we were leaving the theater, one of my friends said, "I can't even be happy about their success because they didn't end up together. She's not with the love of her life."
Mia's life was about acting; Seb's was about opening an amazing jazz club. They both inspired each other to go out and get their dreams. Isn't that all anyone can ask for?
This movie is about priorities, perception, dreams, fears, struggles. And it does have a happy ending, if not the one we so often expect. But neither does life.
In a way, this movie reminds me of Pygmalion. When he originally wrote the play, George Bernard Shaw discovered that people thought Eliza should end up with Prof. Higgins; this bothered him so much that he wrote an epilogue in which Eliza is married to Freddy. Henry Higgins was never the right man for Eliza to marry. He helped her to rise above her position and then they moved on from one another. Mia and Seb both helped each other rise from their position and achieve their dream. Maybe they were not the right person for the other to marry. But they were the person the other needed at that time in their life.
I know I'm rambling, but I'm trying to make sense of the way this movie shook up my insides. If nothing more, we should remember that happy endings don't always look the same. Emma Stone is my spirit animal, I want her wardrobe from this movie, and I want the soundtrack to the movie as well; Ryan Gosling is, as ever, a stud.
Go see the movie and let me know what you thought.
May the music stay with you,
Sharon
Sharon
